The gripper of an object manipulator serves as a general purpose handling facility for tasks such as lifting, transporting, orienting and holding work pieces or tools which in turn performs special operations on work pieces. To achieve the versatility required, the object engaging surfaces or fingers of the gripper cannot be too specialized. It has been known to provide specialized work surfaces which are semi-permanently mounted in place, as by screws, to do a particular repetitive job not requiring maximum versatility. Otherwise, tasks requiring specialized handling are accomplished by using the general purpose gripper to hold a specialized tool. Examples of such tools are vacuum pickup devices for delicate or small objects or specially configured jaw assemblies for grasping objects having a curved or irregular surface. When a gripper uses such a tool to engage an object, much of the ability of the gripper control system to sense the object through sensing devices in its fingers is eliminated or at least compromised. An object of out invention thus is to provide tools for the fingers of an object manipulator which act as part of the manipulator fingers to maintain object sensitivity and yet are easily changed by the manipulator itself to permit specialization without compromising versatility.
Another object of our invention has been to provide interchangeable finger tools which are attached and removed by a simple sliding action, and which do not require separate manipulation of any form of latch.